The end of the deep end: More cities ditch diving boards

Jason Straziuso, The Associated Press

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, July 1, 2003

PHILADELPHIA -- The diving boards were pulled up in the 1980s, and now deep ends are being deep-sixed.

For reasons of safety and family appeal, the standard public swimming pool that many Americans grew up splashing around in -- a rectangle with a bottom that drops off to a diving area maybe 12 feet deep -- is fast being replaced by shallow pools of the sort seen in water parks.

Some cities and states have been filling in the deep ends of their pools, and new pools are less likely to have deep water.

Stephen Hawking Tackled Multiverse And Big Bang In His Final PaperGeoBeats

New Details Emerge About Avicii’s SuicideWibbitz

Archaeologists May Have Found the World's Largest Known Child Sacrifice Site in PeruTime

Trump Says He Did Stay Overnight In MoscowGeoBeats

"Pools found out people were breaking their necks, so they took out the boards, but then they were left with a drowning pool," with children sinking in the deep end, said Griffiths, director of aquatics at Penn State University.

The new all-shallow pools are usually no deeper than 5 feet, can accommodate more people and are seen as more appealing to families. Often they include water slides, spray toys and gradual, beachlike approaches that let people walk into the water. They are often irregularly shaped, because their design is no longer dictated by the need for lanes for serious swimmers.

Philadelphia has been filling in its deep ends over the past several years, said Terri Kerwawich, the city's aquatics coordinator. After filling in two more this spring, the city has only 10 deep ends left at its 86 pools. All but one or two will eventually be filled in.

"It's not just a safety factor," she said. "The deep ends were underutilized."

Parks and recreation officials in the Seattle area do not seem to be following this national trend.

Dewey Potter, a spokeswoman for Seattle Parks and Recreation, for example, said that there was no need to fill in the deep ends of any of its eight indoor and two summer-only outdoor pools. This is because there haven't been any drowning deaths in those pools since 1970, she said.

Steve Chavey, aquatics director for the agency, said drownings should never occur at well-run pools, including those with deep ends. "We typically see more accidents in the shallow ends," he said, stemming from swimmers mistakenly diving into them.

The Recreation and Parks Department director for Mountlake Terrace, Don Sarcletti, said that several child-friendly safety features were added to his town's one major pool complex during a recent $2 million renovation, but that his pool still has a deep end of 9.5 feet for water aerobics. A leisure area for children and families, he said, has lifeguards and is and roped off from the deep area.

Chicago in recent years has built 25 interactive, water parks, said Chicago Park District spokeswoman Katherine McGuire.

The deep end has not met its end yet. After replacing its diving boards with slides, the city of Phoenix three years ago opened a diving pool to accommodate demand.

Tom Ebro, who runs Aquatic Risk Management, a safety consulting business in Lutz, Fla., said YMCAs, hotels and municipalities recognize new pool designs are safer.

There are about 250 pool-diving injuries a year in the United States, Griffiths said. Most happen in less than 5 feet of water.